Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998

Bois Sec Ardoin also learned from a master

by Jim Bradshaw

Alphonse (Bois Sec) Ardoin was born in 1914 at l'Anse de Prien Noir, between Mamou and Basile, near Bayou Duralde

He is the cousin of Amédé Ardoin, the black Creole accordionist who greatly influenced Louisiana French music, as played by both black and white musicians. Amédé was born March 11, 1898 in the L'Anse des Rougeau area of Evangeline Parish and was the first to record la musique créole, South Louisiana's black Creole music.

Amédé crossed racial lines by performing and recording with noted Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee. However, some people thought that he stepped too far when, at a dance in 1941, he reputedly wiped away sweat with a handkerchief offered to him by a white woman. Suffering a terrible beating after the dance, he eventually died of his wounds, emotional and physical, at Pineville, on Nov. 3, 1942.

Dennis McGee, who made recordings with Amédé, remembered him in an interview with Ann Allen Savoy. "He was good, polite," McGee recalled. "That's why they killed him. There was a black man who played the fiddle and he wanted to play with Amédé, and Amédé told him, 'I'm not going to play with you. If you and I play together, two blacks, the whites are going to kill us. There would be nothing to save us. I like to have Mr. McGee with me because Mr. McGee's gonna help me."

Bois Sec Ardoin began playing with Amédé as a teenager, first playing the triangle. He talked about that in an interview with Barry Jean Ancelet:

"There were dances in clubs and there were house dances in those days. And my cousin Amédé played in this area. So my mother brought us to see him. I had a triangle that I would play with him. I always wanted to play music, but I couldn't afford to buy (an accordion) of my own. I bought one from one of my cousins. I paid three dollars for it. Boy, I was really proud of my accordion. I had gotten a job paying fifty cents a day. When I finished my first week, I had three dollars. I had a little cinnamon-colored swayback horse. I rode it about ten miles down the road to buy that first accordion.

"In those days, there were no boxes to put instruments in. We used to put them in flour sacks. I got on my horse and rode over to Soileau. I came back late that afternoon with my accordion in a flour sack. I kept on practicing, but that didn't prevent me from watching Amédé. I kept on playing triangle with him, learning how he played so that I could play like him. I fought that little accordion until I was able to play well enough to have a good one. ...

"When I got a chance to get a good accordion, then things started going well. Canray and I got together to make music. He was old enough and so was I. We must have been around twelve and fifteen years old when we started really going out. We've always played French music and we've been playing together since then, for nearly fifty years now. I guess that's why we get along so well together. And it's still going. I don't know how long it will last. Sometimes we have our differences, but we always come back. One can't seem to do without the other. "

Canray Fontenot died in August 1995.

Ardoin's nickname, Bois Sec, means "dry wood." He explained how he got the name in an interview printed in Savoy's book, Cajun Music, A Reflection of a People: "An old white man (Alfred Veillon) would come every weekend when I was young and I'd wash his car for a little job. Boy, I was glad when I'd see that car coming. ... When I was big enough he would take me to learn how to work. ... He didn't work me too hard ... and ... sometimes the rain would (catch) you in the fields (and) ... the other men would let the rain cool them off (before running for the barn). Not me. (Veillon) would come meet us at the barn after the rain stopped (and ask), 'Why are you dry and all the rest wet?' He had an old tree that was dead, it was dry, you know. He said, 'I'm gonna call you dry wood.' And I kept that name."